Star Trek
Star Trek was the show with the good ol main characters in the series. Team Star Trek 'James T. Kirk' Pine described his first audition as "awful," because he could not take himself seriously as a leader.[7] Abrams did not see Pine's first audition, and it was only after Pine's agent met Abrams' wife that the director decided to give him another audition opposite Quinto. Quinto was supportive of Pine's casting because they knew each other as they worked out at the same gym.[8] After getting the part, Pine sent William Shatner a letter and received a reply containing Shatner's approval. Pine watched classic episodes and read encyclopedias about the Star Trek universe, but stopped as he felt weighed down by the feeling he had to copy Shatner. Pine felt he had to show Kirk's "humor, arrogance and decisiveness," but not Shatner's speech pattern, which would have bordered on imitation.[8] Pine said when watching the original series, he was also struck by how Shatner's performance was characterized by humor. 'Spock' The younger alternate timeline Spock. Quinto expressed interest in the role because of the duality of Spock's half-human, half Vulcan heritage,[7] and how "he is constantly exploring that notion of how to evolve in a responsible way and how to evolve in a respectful way. I think those are all things that we as a society, and certainly the world, could implement."[11] He mentioned he heard about the new film and revealed his interest in the role in a December 2006 interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: the article was widely circulated and he attracted Abrams' interest.[12] For the audition, Quinto wore a blue shirt and flattened his hair down to feel more like Spock.[8] He bound his fingers to practice the Vulcan salute, shaved his eyebrows and grew and dyed his hair for the role.[7] He conveyed many of Spock's attributes, such as his stillness and the way Nimoy would hold his hands behind his back.[8] Quinto commented the physical transformation aided in portraying an alien,[7] joking "I just felt like a nerd. I felt like I was 12 again. You look back at those pictures and you see the bowl cut. There's no question I was born to play the Spock role. I was sporting that look for a good four or five years. The film officially establishes (to Kirk's surprise) that Uhura and Spock are lovers and have been romantically linked for some time, a point which had never been previously explored on TV or in film."[8] Adrien Brody had discussed playing the role with the director before Quinto was cast.[13] 'Spock Prime' Nimoy reprises the role of the older Spock from the original Star Trek timeline, credited as "Spock Prime". He is a longtime friend of Abrams' parents,[14] but became better acquainted with Abrams during filming. Although Quinto watched some episodes of the show during breaks in filming, Nimoy was his main resource in playing Spock.[9] Abrams and the writers met Nimoy at his house; writer Roberto Orci recalled the actor gave a "'Who are you guys and what are you up to?' vibe" before being told how important he was to them. He was silent, and Nimoy's wife Susan Bay told the creative team he had remained in his chair after their conversation, emotionally overwhelmed by his decision after turning down many opportunities to revisit the role.[15] Had Nimoy disliked the script, production would have been delayed for it to be rewritten.[16] He was "genuinely excited" by the script's scope and its detailing of the characters' backstories,[11] saying, "We have dealt with being half-human, half-Vulcan, but never with quite the overview that this script has of the entire history of the character, the growth of the character, the beginnings of the character and the arrival of the character into the Enterprise crew."[17] Abrams said "it was surreal to direct him as Spock, because what the hell am I doing there? This guy has been doing it for forty years. It's like 'I think Spock would...'"[18] 'Nero' The film's time-traveling Romulan villain. Bana shot his scenes toward the end of filming. He wasn't "a huge Trekkie when he was a kid",[19] but had not seen the films.[20] Even though he was "crazy about the original series," he would not have accepted the role unless he liked the script, which he deemed "awesome" once he read it.[21] Bana knew Abrams because they coincidentally shared the same agent.[22] Bana improvised the character's speech patterns.[23] 'Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy' Like Pine, Urban said of taking on the role that "it is a case of not doing some sort of facsimile or carbon copy, but really taking the very essence of what DeForest Kelley has done and honoring that and bringing something new to the table". Urban has been a fan of the show since he was seven years old and actively pursued the role after rediscovering the series on DVD with his son.[24] Urban was cast at his first audition, which was two months after his initial meeting with Abrams. He said he was happy to play a role with lots of comedy, something he had not done since The Price of Milk, because he was tired of action-oriented roles. When asked why McCoy is so cantankerous, Urban joked the character might be a "little bipolar actually!".[25] Orci and Kurtzman had collaborated with Urban on Xena: Warrior Princess, in which he played Cupid and Caesar.[26] 'Nyota Uhura' Abrams asked her to play the role because he had seen her previous work and liked it. Saldana had never seen the original series, though she had played a Trekkie in The Terminal (2004), but agreed to play the role after Abrams complimented her. "For an actor, that's all you need, that's all you want. To get the acknowledgment and respect from your peers," she said. She met with Nichelle Nichols, who explained to her how she had created Uhura's background and had named the character.[27] Saldana's mother was a Star Trek fan and sent her voice mails during filming, giving advice on the part.[28] Sydney Tamiia Poitier also auditioned for the part.[29] The film officially establishes the character's first name, which had never been previously uttered on TV or in film. And also (in an officially discreet manner) that Uhura and Spock are, in fact, lovers and had been romantically linked for some time during the film. 'Montgomery "Scotty" Scott' Abrams contacted Pegg by e-mail, offering him the part.[30] To achieve Scotty's accent, Pegg was assisted by his wife Maureen, who is from Glasgow, although Pegg said that Scotty was from Linlithgow and that he therefore wanted his accent to sound more East Coast Scottish. As a result, the accent he used is a mixture of both, although it leans more towards the West sound.[30] He was also aided by James Doohan's son, Chris, and Tommy Gormley, the film's Glaswegian first assistant director.[31] Pegg described Scotty as a positive Scottish stereotype, noting "Scots are the first people to laugh at the fact that they drink and fight a bit", and that Scotty comes from a long line of Scots with technical expertise, such as John Logie Baird and Alexander Graham Bell. Years before, Pegg's character in Spaced joked that every odd-numbered Star Trek film being "shit" was a fact of life. Pegg noted, "Fate put me in the movie to show me I was talking out of my ass."[32] 'Hikaru Sulu' Abrams had at first been concerned about casting a Korean-American as a Japanese character, but George Takei reassured him that Sulu had been meant to represent all of Asia on the Enterprise, so Abrams went ahead with Cho.[33] Cho acknowledged that being an Asian-American, "there are certain acting roles that you are never going to get, and one of them is playing a cowboy. Sulu is a realization of that dream – going into space." He cited the masculinity of the character as being important to him, and spent two weeks fight training.[34] Although Cho suffered an injury to his wrist during filming, a representative reassured the public that the injury was "no big deal".[35] James Kyson Lee had originally been interested in playing the part of Sulu, but both he and Quinto, who had already been cast as Spock, were at the time members of the cast of the TV show Heroes, and its producers told Lee they did not want to lose another cast member for three months.[36] 'Pavel Chekov' As with the rest of the cast, Yelchin was allowed to choose what elements there were from their predecessor's performances. Yelchin decided to carry on Walter Koenig's speech patterns of replacing "v"s with "w"s, although he and Abrams felt this was a trait more common of Polish accents than Russian ones.[37] He described Chekov as an odd character, being a Russian who was brought on to the show "in the middle of the Cold War." He recalled a "scene where they're talking to Apollo says, 'I am Apollo.' And Chekov is like, 'And I am the czar of all the Russias.' ... They gave him these lines. I mean he really is the weirdest, weirdest character. Category:1966 series debuts Category:Rated 12+ Category:Action Adventure Category:Paramount